Weekly Howl 07-02-14

A small portion of despair and enlightenment delivered to your inbox every Friday7 February 2014 ~

Of the departing Joe Kinnear – who failed to make a single permanent signing for Newcastle in seven months as director of football – Alan Pardew said: "I'm sad to see anybody lose their job. He did a lot of good work here." If the Manager of Year awards include a prize for keeping a straight face while making a comment to the media, Alan can start preparing his acceptance speech.

---Badge of the week ~Invincible Eleven, LiberiaIt seems a bit fate-tempty – to fall in with the contemporary vogue for instant adjective creation – to call your football team the Invincible Eleven before they have even kicked a ball. Rather like introducing a conversational sally with the words “There’s a really funny story about that”, or telling a 70s DJ that you hitchhiked to the Top of the Pops studio and do not have a place to stay tonight. The image is of a palm tree listing gently in the warm breeze, underneath which are a wheelbarrow full of balls, a pick and a shovel.

The people in this part of the country, as the motto "Discipline, Courage & Unity" suggests, are expected to make themselves useful from an early age. When a European child reaches their fifth birthday, they will expect to receive a musical teapot or possibly the ophthalmology student group of Sylvanian Families. When a Liberian male child is five he will normally be given a pick axe and shovel and asked to lay a pipe. Expect a hard, physical game if you up against this team. But they are not invincible. Only Captain Scarlet is invincible. Cameron Carter

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Residents from the local alpaca farm take in an Anglian Combination match at Wells Town. They'll be mascots next.